The Great Race

by Tom Clancy

  The tall, thin, usually smiling boy who served as the engineer whirled around. ‘You’re really sorry?’ he began.

  But his captain reached round, laying a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Later, Daren,’ the other boy said.

  Daren’s habitual good humor seemed to have deserted him with whatever catastrophe had hit their ship. He shook off his captain’s arm with a snarl. But he did nod. ‘Later,’ he said.

  The Net Force Explorers trailed behind as the African boys left the building. Leif noticed that they didn’t head for the bus. They took the path that led to the office building housing the Ultimate Frontier production staff.

  When the bus headed back to the hotel without the African team, Leif began to get actively curious.

  ‘Where is their room?’ he asked David, who’d visited with the team to listen to the music of the new African bands.

  ‘They’re on our floor, but on the east wing. Their room overlooks the pool,’ David replied. He was still running a towel over his hair.

  ‘What do you say we take a stroll over there? Either we can go visit, or we might catch them in the hallways.’

  Just as they got over to the east wing, the elevator doors opened, and the African team members exited.

  ‘Hey, Daren,’ David called out, stepping up to the tall boy.

  Before he reached him, another figure came out - a very flustered, harassed-looking Jane Givens. ‘Sorry, guys,’ she said, ‘we can’t talk. There’s a personal emergency back home. These boys will be flying out tonight.’

  ‘Emergency?’ David echoed. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘We don’t have time,’ Jane insisted. ‘We’re trying to catch a flight. Go back to your room.’

  She herded the Setangi team members along like a mother hen. Over her head, however, Daren looked back and mouthed a single word. ‘Outside.’

  David and Leif shared one glance, then jumped to catch the elevator.

  The hotel’s inner courtyard was spacious and airy. But the desert chill was in the air. No one was swimming in the pool when they arrived.

  ‘What now?’ David asked as they stood among deserted deck chairs.

  ‘Something weird is going on,’ Leif said. ‘Personal emergency, my pale white … foot. Jane isn’t letting that team talk to anyone.’ He stared up, counting the floors along the eastern wing. ‘Which would be their room?’

  As if in answer, a tall, dark figure appeared on one of the third-floor balconies - Daren.

  ‘We wouldn’t want to leave these.’ They could hear his voice clearly as he glanced down at them. Then he turned, holding up a handful of swimming trunks that had been left out to dry.

  With his other hand, he pitched a small white ball off the balcony. It seemed to come down in slow motion, floating on an idle breeze.

  Leif grimaced. If that winds up in the swimming pool - David made a jumping catch, banging into one of the deck chairs. Then he and Leif ducked quickly into the shadows under the lowest balcony.

  That was a lucky move. A moment later, they heard Jane Given’s voice. ‘I thought I heard something out here.’

  Keeping to the shadows as much as possible, Leif and David made their way back to the hotel door. They headed round to the opposite wing before they took an elevator.

  When the doors closed, Leif nearly tackled his friend. ‘Okay. What did Daren throw?’

  David held up a crumpled ball of notepaper. Eagerly, they straightened it out.

  There were just a few hastily scribbled words.

  Thuriens built weapons into their design - used them on us. Beware!

  Chapter Sixteen

  Leif and David sat in their suite’s living room^ letting the other Net Force Explorers read Daren’s note.

  ‘How could they have smuggled weapons aboard their ship? The specs absolutely forbid them,’ Andy said.

  ‘I can see ways that seemingly innocent components might be combined to create a weapon,’ David said. He looked as if something he’d eaten was now seriously disagreeing with him. ‘Something on the order of a laser, perhaps. Nothing like the heavy pulsers and cee-plus torps warships use in the series.’

  ‘Against something as flimsy as most of these racers, a laser is all they need,’ Matt said. ‘Mess with one of the engines, and all you’ve got is a cloud of plasma.’

  ‘More to the point, can we rejigger some of our components to pull the same trick?’ Andy wanted to know.

  David shook his head. ‘This is a racing ship, not a flying warehouse. We just don’t have the spare parts to do anything like that. I’d have had to design the capability in from the ground up.’

  ‘And since all designs were locked in when we handed over our datascrips, there’s no chance of changing that now,’ Leif said heavily.

  ‘Well, I intend to change something,’ Matt growled.

  ‘Starting with the attitude of the people at the studio. What do you say we march back into Wallenstein’s office tomorrow and call him on this?’

  ‘I’d say we’d be bundled out of this hotel and be gone by afternoon,’ Leif said. ‘Another round of “personal emergencies.” The studio does not want word of this getting out. They probably didn’t catch the weapons of the Thurien ship when the design was submitted. But now Wallenstein’s “everything not forbidden is permitted” policy has turned around and bitten him on the tail.’

  Andy gave him an ironic smile. ‘Besides, secret weapons make for a great plot twist. Think how Captain Venn and Commander Dominic would end up handling them.’

  Matt hadn’t given up yet. ‘We could go down to breakfast tomorrow and show everyone this note. If all the teams pull together—’

  ‘I wish it were that simple,’ Leif said, cutting his friend off. ‘But it’s not likely to happen. For one thing, everyone is so suspicious and paranoid that they’re not likely to believe us. We’re number three in the race right now. If we eliminate the front-runner, we become number two. So we have a motive for smearing the C.A. team. And what’s our proof? A wrinkled piece of paper that anyone could have written on. The only people who’d have backed us up are gone.’

  ‘And I can’t think that Wallenstein and his flunkies will be very happy with us for trying to crack the stone wall they set up,’ Andy pointed out. ‘Besides, it’s just virtual guns - it’s not like they’ve got an armory in their hotel room. If this becomes public knowledge, half the teams will probably be kicking themselves that they didn’t come up with the trick.’

  ‘Yeah,’ David said in a flat voice. ‘It’s just a game - just for fun. Until the C.A. team wins and they get their hands on technology our government’s been denying them for two decades.’ He dug a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘Just for fun, I tried a Net search on any Cetniks, cross-referenced with higher education in cybernetics. It’s not a very popular name in the Balkans, I guess. There were only a few hits. I printed out this one.’

  It was the record of a Slobodan Cetnik, a student in cybernetics at the Polytechnic at Cetinje before the last blowup in the Balkans.

  ‘The age is probably right,’ Leif said.

  ‘And that picture looks like him if you add a mustache,’ Matt added.

  ‘Your ID picture would look like him if we added a mustache,’ Andy retorted. ‘We can’t tell anything for sure.’

  ‘Then if we can’t do anything in the real worlds can we do anything to protect ourselves in veeyar?’ Leif asked.

  David brightened a little. This was an area he could handle. ‘I was thinking of trying something with the force-fields.’

  ‘It takes a lot of juice to shrug off an energy weapon -even a laser,’ Matt objected. ‘We’d probably have to shut down everything to generate a field that could protect us. And then we’d become a sitting duck. If the Thuriens kept pecking away, they’d nail us sooner or later.’

  ‘I was thinking more along the lines of an offensive weapon,’ David replied. ‘The fields are just generated energy patterns. If we extended our hyperspace sails to touc
h another ship, would that give us enough conductance to send along a more powerful zap?’

  Leif ran his mind over the emitters for the energy sails. ‘The projectors would give us a decent enough field of fire,’ he said slowly. ‘But I don’t think we could generate enough power to blow a hole in them.’

  ‘No, I don’t think we could blow their airlocks off,’ David said. ‘But we may put their eyes out. Could we generate enough of a surge to blow their scanners? If they can’t see, they can’t shoot.’

  The continued working on that contingency scheme until late into the night.

  The next morning, Leif was the first up.

  What goes around, comes around, he thought. I was the last up yesterday.

  He padded around the room, washed up, and crept down for some breakfast.

  The early-morning business crowd had just about cleared the hotel’s dining room when Leif came in. And since this was supposed to be a free day for the contestants, most seemed to prefer catching a few more Zs.

  Then Leif spotted Ludmila in a corner of the room. She had a fully loaded tray from the breakfast buffet and didn’t appear to be touching any of it.

  Grabbing some juice, milk, cereal, and a banana, he walked over to join her.

  ‘Hello, Leif.’ Ludmila’s greeting seemed quiet, lackluster - no dimples today.

  ‘I’m usually not up this early, degenerate American that I am,’ he told her.

  That got him at least the ghost of a smile. ‘So, the domovina’s propaganda is right.’

  ‘I suppose you’re always up early, feeding the chickens or something.’

  Ludmila sat up very straight. ‘We do have cities in the Alliance, you know,’ she said. ‘My mother and I live in one. She works in a factory.’

  ‘And your father?’

  She shook her head. ‘Dead in the war.’ For a long moment, her eyes seemed to focus on nothing. ‘By this time in the day back home, my mother would already be off to work. I get up to have breakfast with her - to have some time with her. And between the time when she leaves and school … I have time alone.’

  ‘What do you do?’ Leif asked.

  Ludmila shrugged. ‘Read, study sometimes. Early morning was my designing time for our ship’s engines.’

  And the ship’s weapons? Leif wondered.

  ‘But often enough, I use the time to daydream,’ the girl went on, looking a little embarrassed. Then she looked as if she’d come down to earth with a thud. ‘But what we dream of, and the reality - those are two different things.’

  Leif frowned slightly, trying to understand her mood. ‘I’m afraid you’re losing me, Ludmila.’

  She looked at him, a very direct stare from blue eyes under flaxen eyebrows. ‘What was your first experience of virtual reality?’

  ‘Veeyar?’ The question seemed to come out of left field. ‘I don’t know. I was pretty young at the time.’ Even then, his parents had had enough money to afford the best systems available. Leif tried hard to recall. ‘Maybe it was some sort of toddler’s fantasyland. I seem to remember a big, pink bunny who played games with me. It might have been a cartoon character come to life.’ He felt color rising in his face. ‘If I remember right, it sort of scared me. I was howling for my mother.’

  Ludmila actually laughed and ruffled his hair. ‘Afraid? A clever, fox-like fellow like you? That’s what I should call you – lisica, the fox.’

  She suddenly yanked her hand away, as if she’d burnt it.

  ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,’ she said.

  I wasn’t complaining, Leif thought.

  ‘Shall I tell you about my first time in - what did you call it? Veeyar? How very American to slur it all together.’ Her face grew very still. ‘I was four years old when the training started - the training all the children of Savez Karpaty receive. It’s an annual training simulation - what to do if the domovina were invaded by aggressor states. I cried, too, as I was herded along past burning buildings, through smoke, away from explosions. We were taught how to get off a road quickly in case aircraft came to strafe, how to step aside for our own forces’ tanks and trucks.’

  ‘And you had to do this every year?’ Leif said.

  Ludmila nodded. ‘Just before spring - the start of campaigning season. Year by year, my duties changed. As a little one, I was a despised nestrovik - a noncombatant.’

  Her lips puckered, as if tasting the word. ‘Odd. It doesn’t sound half as awful in English.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Leif asked.

  He received a shrug in answer. ‘My job was to stay out of the way of our defenders and not to be captured by the enemy. Then I grew older, and received more responsibility. I had to guide the younger children, to lead them away from the fighting as I had been led when I was smaller.’

  She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. ‘I’ll bet I’ve wiped more virtual noses than you’ve kissed girls.’

  ‘Real or virtual?’ Leif asked, trying to lighten the moment.

  ‘Both,’ Ludmila replied seriously. ‘The bigger I got, the more jobs I could do. I was taught about first aid and fighting fires - things I suppose you learn with your Net Force Explorers. We learned things we had to practice between simulations. And all the time, we had it drummed into our heads - ours was a country in arms, where everyone must be ready to work, to fight … in whatever capacity the domovina required.’

  ‘And who was supposed to invade you?’ Leif wanted to know. The last war had been started when Alliance factions had tried to seize land and drive off the inhabitants.

  ‘Oh, we had all sorts of invaders over the years,’ Ludmila said quietly. ‘Sometimes it was the troops of nearby countries - wherever the tensions were greatest. They would plunder, take hostages, kill civilians like me. The programmers made the wounds hurt, to teach us a lesson.’

  Leif winced. He’d encountered virtual bullets like that.

  ‘Other times, the invaders were aggressors from the European Union, or the United Nations - they would program African troops to frighten us - cruel, like animals.’

  Never miss a chance for a little propaganda, Leif thought.

  ‘But in every simulation, sooner or later, the Americans would come. And they’d be the worst of all, bombing us, blowing up buildings, leaving scorched earth where there had been farms and homes. Destroying our land just to prove to the world that they had the power to do it.’

  Leif looked at the girl in silence. If I had been brought up all my life in that sort of madhouse^ he wondered, what kind of feelings would I have about this country?

  ‘I hope we’ve been able to show you that Americans aren’t like that,’ he said.

  Ludmila only shook her head, her eyes focused far beyond him again. He could only wonder what she was seeing there.

  ‘This year I was “promoted,” as they say, to combat.’ Her voice was very brittle. ‘We had target practice, and learned to crawl around in the mud - the basic training. But this was our test of fire. It’s almost funny. We fought African troops … and Americans …’

  Her words trailed away. And at last, understanding hit Leif like a bolt of lightning.

  Who would operate the weapons on a racer?

  On armed explorers, star cruisers like the Constellation, the combat command console played an important part on the bridge. It could double for other damaged bridge locations, and the combat commander - the redoubtable Commander Konn - operated the ship’s weapons.

  But the racers were down to the smallest possible crews. A captain to make the crucial decisions. A scanning officer to keep an eye on everything around him. A helm officer to lay courses, steer, and take evasive maneuvers if necessary. They were all too busy to fire a gun. That left the engineer, Leif’s job … and Ludmila’s.

  For the glory of the domovina, Ludmila had gunned down the Setangi craft, robbing the African crew of their chance to a fair race. She’d done what she was supposed to do, but she was human enough to feel guilty about it. Obviously, she didn
’t like the killing, even in veeyar.

  What can I tell her? Leif suddenly thought of the hundreds of hours he’d spent in dogfights, showdowns, war games, and the thousand and one ways of ‘playing guns’ in the world of simulation. He felt a little small.

  Then a more disquieting thought hit him. Ludmila had mentioned fighting Afiricans and Americans in veeyar. One part of those ‘dreams’ had become reality. Was she trying to warn him about the other?

  ‘Ludmila,’ he began.

  She only gasped, staring over his shoulder as if she saw Death standing in the distance.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Leif risked a casual glance over his shoulder - and saw Mr Cetnik standing at the entrance to the restaurant, scanning the tables.

  ‘What?’ He turned back to Ludmila, but she was no longer in her seat. She’d ducked beneath the table, hiding behind the tablecloth. Her eyes were pleading. ‘I was ordered not to talk to you,’ she whispered.

  Great, Leif thought. If he glances over here and notices this is a table for two …

  Reaching across the table, he grabbed up Ludmila’s untouched plate, moved his empty cereal bowl in its place, and began choking down cold eggs, bacon, and sausage. He wasn’t really a breakfast eater - the effort made him feel a little queasy.

  But he was able to turn back to Cetnik with a full mouth and a legitimate claim to the monster meal on the table. ‘Ah!’ he said genially, nodding to the C.A. agent. ‘No better way to start the day!’

  He even managed a mild burp.

  It, worked. Cetnik turned away from the degenerate American in disgust. He obviously didn’t spot Ludmila where she crouched. Instead, he stomped off toward the locker room for the pool and the hotel’s health club.

  Ludmila looked up at him with shining eyes. ‘Oh!’ she breathed patting his knee. ‘You are a lisica, A clever fox!’

  Then she was out of her hiding place and leaving the restaurant. Wherever Cetnik found her, she would be far from the redheaded American boy.

  Leif picked up his napkin to wipe his lips and blot up the sudden dampness on his palms.